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6 THE RURAL VOICE
Robert Mercer
Garlic gets big boost from small farm
It was billed as the Greater
Errington Garlic Festival and it was
an overwhelming success in terms of
visitors. John Olsen of Unicorn
Farms expected about 400 people to
attend the free
open house. But
the rough
estimate
following the
half-day
suggested the
number was
closer to 500-
700.
The idea of
the garlic festival
was to get people
to the farm, see
it, use the farm
store and to talk
about the
experience to friends and neighbours.
"There's nothing like word of mouth
advertising" John said and although
he was not set up to handle all the
visitors he got, he hopes to see many
of the same people back again to
sample his garlic and garlic products.
Unicorn Farms is not big: the
annual production of garlic this year
was estimated at one and a half
tonnes. The target is to grow to four
tonnes a year with much of the crop
based on the Rocombole variety. This
is a later -harvested variety that grows
well, and is more pungent than the
Silverskin variety in supermarkets
which comes from China.
John will be growing the
Silverskin again as it is not a hard -
necked variety and is used in braiding
garlic. This practice was offered as a
hands-on demonstration seminar
during the Garlic Festival, as was a
popular seminar about garlic
production.
Errington is a small village (less
than 200 population) on Vancouver
Island where the climate is mild, but
still in need of summer irrigation for
satisfactory pr,oduction of garlic. As
an organic farm there were some
weed control problems during the
year but John hopes to overcome that
with a new approach to cultivation.
This will include moving the growing
area to a different field.
So what did it take to "bring the
people in" to this farm open house?
Although there was no fixed
promotion budget for this event, a lot
off publicity was initiated and gained.
As John has previous business
experience in communications, a
series of press releases were sent to
the print media in the central and
southern Island areas. Good pick-up
of the stories was achieved this way
with front page coverage in two of
the local bi-weekly papers which
really helped to get the news out.
The only out-of-pocket promotion
expense was for a bookmark -type of •
brochure handed round to local
hotels, information outlets and the
hospitality trade. The cost of that was
*200 for printing. One hotel even
placed the festival dates on its
roadside sign board. "Our major
problem was that the day's program
of activities was to be printed off on
the computer" said 'John. "One copy
per carload of visitors, but the printer
ran out of ink!"
The Festival offered a range of
activities and involved a lot of
community participation. In the back
of the farm there was music, provided
free by local musicians. There were
three opportunities for a light lunch,
spaghetti with garlic sauce or Caesar
salad with garlic dressing, and one
for drinks.
The day started out "as a bit of a
headache" according to John, but in
the end he said that after it was all
over "I had a good feeling about the
whole thing". Would they do it
again? "Yes".0
Robert Mercer was editor of the
Broadwater Market Letter and a. farm
commentator in Ontario for 25 years.
Deadline for the
November issue of
The Rural Voice
is October 17, 2001